MONTREAL—Canada’s two major railways are well-positioned to weather potential economic headwinds and the U.S.-China trade war, analysts say, as ongoing investments in new cars and track bolster crude-by-rail and commodities shipments. The moves follow a major backlog in grain shipments last winter. CP moved 2.64 million tonnes of Canadian grain and grain products in October, a company record for monthly shipments that it nearly matched in November. Automotive shipment revenues dropped 21 per cent for CP and 10 per cent for CN in 2017, with further declines in 2018. Ongoing steel and aluminum tariffs affect only a fraction of the railways’ shipments, but CN and CP remain vulnerable to the fallout from U.S.-China trade tensions and a potential economic slowdown following a decade of global growth, Clarke said.

Source: thestar January 04, 2019 16:07 UTC